Final Exam Notes from Module 13 - 22
Module 13
Underworld
- gods live in Heaven and few mortals
- most souls go to Hades, good or bad
- Tartarus, could be considered a parallel to our Hell
- people who distinguished themselves in the eyes of the gods existed in a part of the underworld known as Elysium, an equivalent perhaps to our Heaven
Homeric View
- Homer Odyssey is earliest 8th or 7th BC
- Odysseus return from Troy
- shipwrecked
- takes years to find his way home to his wife Penelope
- instructed to go to the land of the dead by witch Circe
Land of Dead
- he meets the soul of his comrade Elepenor
- Elpenor tells Odysseus to return to bury his body
- burial is important since his soul is not at rest
- life preferable to death
- meets Achilles (semi-divine hero) and tells him he would rather be a slave on earth than rule in the underworld
- Tantalus tantalized by water to drink and food to eat
- he is punished for stealing food, telling humans what the gods discussed, or cooking his son Pelops to see if the gods realized
- Sisphyus must push a boulder up a hill, only to have it fall (punished for sins against gods)
- Sisphyus told Zeus he carried off his daughter Aegina and Zeus sent Thanatos (Death)
- Sisphyus trapped Death in chains so no humans died, but Area freed death and took him revenge
- punishment in Homeric view is acting in a way against the gods, not failing one’s interaction
Plato
- fourth-century Greek Philosopher Plato
- world beyond what we see and know in life which itself is an illusory reality
- emphasis on the soul (psyche)
- soul of human separates at death and is returned to true existence after death
- mortal man Er returns to life to recound his experience of what happens to souls after death in Myth of Er
- different outcomes for the souls of men, depending on how they acted in life
- Plato, virtue of life is significant for the one’s lot in afterlife
Virgil
- Latin poet, book six of Aeneid
- poem written at the end of first-century BC
- Aeneas descends ot the underworld
- Aeneas son of Aphrodite and Anchises
- Aeneas goes to underworld to see his father Anchises
- must get a golden bough sacred to Persephone and bury his comrade Misenus
- aided by Sibyl prophetess of Apollo at Cumae
- those not buried are not allowed to cross into the realm of the dead, and must wait in between two world until they are buried
- Cerberus, guard dog of underworld
- Tartarus, a terrifying fortress which holds great sinners such as Tantalus and Sisyphus
- Tityus, assaults Leto and fate is now stretched across nine acres as a bird eats away his liver (which continuously regenerates to allow the punishment to continue eternally)
- Tartarus also houses those people who have sinned against fellow humans, those who hated their brothers and harmed their relatives